It came up about three times in his explanation Friday of what is going on with China’s stock market, according to a Japanese finance ministry official. When asked by a reporter if Zhou was talking about a bubble, Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso was unequivocal: “What else bursts?”
A dissection of the slowdown of the world’s second-largest economy and talk about the equity rout which erased $5 trillion of value was a focal point at the meeting of global policy makers in Ankara. That wasn’t enough for Aso, who said that the discussions hadn’t been constructive.
It was China, rather than the timing of an interest-rate increase by the Federal Reserve, that dominated the discussion, according to the Japanese official, with many people commenting that China’s sluggish economic performance is a risk to the global economy and especially to emerging-market nations.